I really didn't expect him to so adamantly lie like that. And then to first be called out by Chris about it and boldly say "Chris, seriously, that is wrong" and then declare that we're making it up -- that takes stones.
I'd really love to know what the best way to confront this in such a format (my first time doing live TV debate).
Is it:
"No, you're wrong. Anti-circumvention provisions affect US sites, US sites with foreign domain names (like .it) are affected, and US companies who would have to remove links from search results are all examples of how you're wrong."
I worry I've lost the average TV viewer by the second sentence.
And then there's dealing with someone interrupting you... I'm curious to see what the HN community thinks about optimally handling that one.
When they say, "This is a jobs bill," you say, "This is a typical big government attempt to meddle in something they don't understand."
When they say, "This won't affect American sites," you say, "Search engines don't pirate movies. Neither do Visa or Paypal. Going after them is just unfair." [Note: Search engines. Not DNS. The minute you say DNS you lose.]
When they say, "Google profits from pirated software," you say, "Not as much as the congressmen are profiting from the $95 million dollars in lobbyist money that paid for this bill."
Other talking points: "How come congress can't seem to agree on anything that matters to the country? Unemployment, the deficit... they're totally gridlocked. But when the entertainment industry pays lobbyists $95 million to get a bill they wrote passed, both Republicans and Democrats line up to co-sponsor it."
Trying to say something that actually gets to the merit of the bill is a waste of time on a Sunday morning talk show... it's just too complicated an issue.
1. The exec was a complete ass and Alexis didn't call him out for being rude and condescending of alternative interpretations. There was a lot of potential to completely bankrupt his opinion using other perspectives from individuals with less at stake in the fight then this executive.
2. As you pointed out, his counter points were too dense for natural consumption by "average" americans. Its not just DNS but the internet in general is mostly an entertainment to most Americans. You critique of the language modifications that have to happen is dead on.
3. Mr. Cotton had one point and Alexis seemed to wander all over. Judicial process + wholesale theft + non-domestic vs. (Alexis') dense and theoretical arguments revolving around feasibility and implementation.
As tech people, we can all agree that this is important. With out the soundbites, we'll never get the critical mass to prevent this. Alexis did do a good job of maintaining his composure with the really inconsiderate tactics. Just needs to put together a few key "talking points" and hammer. Thats the way this works in these news formats.
I'd further argue that the key talking point should be something like:
This is a battle between old established interests who have long controlled congress's wallet versus the leading innovators in the United States.
Who do you want leading technology decisions in this country? Congress and cable providers or Google/Apple/Facebook/Microsoft?
Follow the money. It's as simple as that. There's a reason why every innovative tech company in this country is against it. This will stifle innovation. Follow the money and you'll see how old established industries who have fought innovation for years are the same ones pushing this bill down the throats of the American people.
Tell them how one server can be hosting hundreds of American businesses. If one store in your mall is selling fake Nikes, imagine if the entire mall would be raided and shut down?
This bill does that. This bill shuts down the entire mall because of one bad store. Hundreds and thousands of American businesses can be shut down for no reason leaving even more people unemployed.
I understand how much we want to argue about free speech and dns filtering. But welcome to politics. This is where we learn from these folks: talk about the topic of the day. Today, that is jobs. Find an angle to link this shit to jobs. The opposition certainly did. We haven't quite(you made some headway by talking about Ford).
http://steveblank.com/2012/01/04/why-the-movie-industry-cant...
I see one thing that could defeat this: convincing smart people who have the ear of Congress that this really is bad. I don't think we have convinced those people. Some may interpret that as corrupt Congress ignoring the people again, but I interpret that as maybe our arguments against it aren't really all that great.
Congress is going to to see these slogans just as they do the "SOPA will break the internet" stories.
Maybe our only real complaint is that we don't want Congress meddling with our Internet and that reason just isn't good enough to convince anyone?
You're right, if you spew a bunch of technospeak you will lose the audience. It is important to remember that you are engaging in a performance, not a debate. You might want to consider taking some acting lessons.
The most important thing is: don't get emotional. Don't get indignant. Use a tone of voice that you would use with a child who has told you a fib (or made a mistake). So, for example, don't say "That's a lie." Instead say something like, "No, that is simply not true" and then immediately follow that with a short citation that shows it's not true. Example, "SOPA only affects foreign companies." Response, "No, that's simply not true. Section blahdeeblah specifically refers to U.S. companies..." or whatever. Then immediately transition to one of your own talking points. "And even if it were true that the letter of the legislation exempted U.S. companies (which it doesn't) that would be nearly unenforceable because the jurisdictional boundaries on the internet are unclear..." or whatever.
The second most important thing: know what they are going to say before they say it, and have your answers ready. A crucial part of the performance is appearing secure in your position, and any hesitation or stumble hurts you. So be prepared for them to lie. Expect them to lie. Study their arguments ahead of time so you know in advance what the lies will be. This is not hard to do. The lies are carefully crafted and scripted, and it's unlikely that you will hear one that hasn't made an appearance somewhere before.
I'd be happy to do some debate prep with you if you like.
This, absolutely. For some inspiration on this point, one of the best real-life examples of someone keeping cool on a heated debate show, and neutralizing his opponent in so doing, was John Kerry vs. John O'neil on the Dick Cavett show in 1971.
O'neil opens with a three minute tirade, calling Kerry a 'little man' and 'coward' among other things:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9j4AP2GW7Ac&t=4m4s
Kerry responds in a completely unreactive, nonplussed, measured manner, and supports his case with data:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9j4AP2GW7Ac&t=7m16s
Regardless of your opinions on his politics, that's the way to handle such a situation - unreactive, unresponsive, data-driven.
Regarding SOPA, there are a couple points to keep hammering home:
1. The people pirating movies would not otherwise be paying for them if they couldn't get them for free. They just wouldn't buy them. Many of them lack the disposable income, or they are foreigners circumventing DVD region restrictions, or they're just doing it because it's available, etc. (Can you make a supporting case for that with the data? I'm not familiar enough with the issue and available data here.)
2. Businesses that provide innovative delivery options are booming - iTunes Music/TV/Movies, Amazon MP3, Netflix. Torrenting media, even MP3s, is enough of a pain that people will pay for a good user experience (a/v quality, reliability, on-demand, etc., everything torrents lack). Sometimes people will even buy high quality versions of stuff they've torrented and really liked. Companies that take advantage of that opportunity are rolling in it.
3. The content industry has fought every delivery innovation ever - radio, TV, VCR, and now even the Internet. Are we really going to let them compromise the greatest platform for social, political, educational, technological, and business innovation ever created, over a shortsighted attempt to squash the genie back into the bottle so they don't have to adapt and adjust?
As long as no one challenges the assertion that piracy is this terrible thing and the only way to deal with it is to censor the Internet, they'll keep coming back and back until they finally get what they want. On the off chance you haven't read Tim O'reilly's argument on this point, it's well worth it:
http://gigaom.com/2012/01/13/tim-oreilly-why-im-fighting-sop...
and followup:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/107033731246200681024/posts/5Xd3...
Regarding the lying: you're going to have to expect that. This is a fight the media industry feels is worth winning at the expense of the truth. When confronted with it however it will always look best to give a level-headed and reasoned response. You have the moral high ground and you should keep it.
The same point above applies to being interrupted etc. I think you'll look much more in control and certainly more comfortable if you keep to the format. Having to run interference while your opponent is making their point looks weak. Wait your turn and look professional.
Keep up the excellent work Alexis!
For your part, you did extremely well to not even acknowledge that he was trying to interrupt you at all.
But of course, I walked in with a bias on the subject.
Television is not about facts, it's about communicating feelings and emotions. It's about painting an image of your opposition.
Memes we need to spread:
The moguls and their political puppets that support these bills are dinosaurs.
These bills were written by lawyers who don't understand that this will break the internet.
These bills are created by "media moguls" or "media elite" afraid of innovating.
SOPA / PIPA needs to be painted as radical and extremist.
Computers and the internet have been the backbone of innovation and economic growth the past 20 years.
The censorship meme (sadly) doesn't matter to Middle America. We need to drop it.
I'd suggest the following talking points and sound bites for the next debate:
-"Kauffman Foundation says that 2/3 of new jobs are created by high growth technology startups. This bill breaks the internet, and kills startups that could be the next Facebook, YouTube, Google or Ebay."
-When faced with the lying... "Are Google, Twitter, Facebook, Ebay, Yahoo all lying then?"
-"Media companies and their lobbyists tried to kill VHS, the cassette recorder, the phonograph, the MP3 player and now... now, they are trying to kill the internet. They were wrong then. They're wrong now."
-"The people who created this bill are lawyers not engineers. They don't understand how the internet works."
-"SOPA and PIPA are radical copyright protectionism"
-"SOPA and PIPA are corporate welfare of the worst kind, protecting industries that are afraid of innovation"
-"We are in the worst economic conditions in a century. This the the worst possible time to ram through radical legislation created to protect media moguls sitting on mountains of cash".
-"In this terrible economy, we need to do everything we can to support technology companies who are one of the few bright spots in this economy"
And... for what it's worth... after we beat SOPA / PIPA, we need a Startup PAC to take a proactive long view on educating legislators and their staffers on these issues, rather than constantly reacting to awful legislation like SOPA/PIPA.
If you were at all nervous about that, it didn't show. Most people (myself included) cannot speak truth to power so easily without being visibly phased. From your comment it sounds like you know the bill to a T, so my one criticism would be that you could have conveyed very unambiguously that he was wrong on three counts (with respect to the bill not affecting US sites). The details that follow might be lost on the audience, but the "wrong on three counts" is what people will walk away with.
> Mr Cotton mentioned due process a few times
How exactly does BensFreeMovies.eu (I made that site up) hosted in Netherlands get due process from being potentially banned by the US courts?
If we want to maintain the sanctity of due process then that works both ways and we have to give the defendant the chance to represent themselves. What if that entity's management are nationals of a country not normally allowed to enter the US?
> This is costing jobs
How does stopping Americans from accessing pirating assets that are perceived to be American-owned, but hosted on a foreign site, really help save jobs? The rest of the world can still access said content. SOPA is just about covering the US entertainment industry's eyes so they can't see the pirated content - it doesn't actually make the content go away.
Etc. I would fight back on these kinds of points rather than the trying to philosophically debate at a higher level, sadly. This is how you win hearts and minds with the 'normal' people because you can demonstrate flaws that they can more easily relate to.
When they lie, you need to quote a chapter and verse. Viewers will take the assertion of whoever sounds like they know the bill best as the truth. If you list section/subsection numbers and recite part of the bill, it will make you more credible than him. If you just memorize a few small parts verbatim you can win the battle.
When they are rude, you need to say something that calls them out on talking over you and evokes sympathy, but isn't rude. The best I have so far in this regard is "Mr. Smith, if I could just be allowed to finish, Mr. Smith, I'd like to add..." But I think a better response is possible that meets the criteria.
Should I get the chance again, I'm going to be ready for whatever madness they throw at me.
edit: just saw your response. Thanks!
The foundation of the web is links. SOPA attacks any internet company that links to sites that host copyrighted content. Well, Google links to sites that host copyrighted content. So does Reddit, and so does any other company that allows the public to create and post content.
Our founders called this nation the United States of America. United. They knew that where their is unity and community, there is power.
By persecuting companies for linking to illegal content, SOPA threatens the unity and connectivity that the internet provides.
When an internet company like Reddit, HN or Facebook gives its users the freedom to post content, it gives its users the freedom to post anything they like. SOPA introduces the fear that a user might post something illegally. If SOPA passes, web companies could be forced to disallow user freedom altogether.
Invaluable resources like Wikipedia have been created by allowing user freedom. Who knows what incredible resources user freedom could lead to in the future?
By persecuting companies when its users post copyrighted content, SOPA threatens freedom on the internet.
I love this: keep pushing things further out of whack and all of a sudden the previous onerous policies start looking pretty good. The DMCA takedown provisions do give the little guy some power to defend copyright without going to federal court, but there is little recourse when abuse occurs and many of the other provisions of the act were a pure profit taking by industry giants.
10 years ago? No it was not. It only seems ok to a perspective that has been warped by exposure to SOPA.
The anti-circumvention parts of the DMCA are insane, but the takedown stuff isn't bad and benefits the little guy just as much as the big guy.
This completely ignores the blatant due process issues.
Aside: WTF? Everyone produces "IP". These are not a separate class of people.
I think he meant "people who produce IP professionally" or "people who earn a living off their IP". Certainly between here and reddit and other sites I've probably produced hundreds of pages of stuff, some of it even borderline insightful, and I'd be pissed if someone stole it, but it doesn't pay my rent or buy my dinner.
> To say that "big guys" and "little guys" are on equal footing with takedowns is to be willfully ignorant of reality.
I'm not saying it's perfect, and I don't know overall whether I like that it exists or not. But I also don't see how it's as much of a problem as people make it out to be, and I don't see how it only favors the big guys.
Let's say you're a small time photographer, and someone steals your pictures and posts them online. A DMCA claim and you can have them taken down. That is in the interest of small folks, who may not be able to hire lawyers or file law suits in whatever jurisdiction is necessary to prevail.
I have explained why I believe it helps small and large business equally. If you'd like to have a discussion, I invite to explain why you think what you think, and open yourself to criticism by the community.
What you think is the "reality of the situation" requires explanation. If you aren't willing to provide that explanation, this discussion forum may not be a good fit for you.
Who said anything about businesses?
That reality? Because you're not entitled to your own.
It's certainly possible that actions like those you outline (which essentially amount to barratry) could happen. I never said that the content provisions were perfect; I'm not a big fan of some language and some behaviors that are in the content takedown sections of the DMCA. It could certainly be modified and improved, and I'd be all for that. But I'd argue that it, as-is, remains a useful course of action for the "little guy" IP producers who essentially have no other recourse, and that that outweighs the abuses perpetuated by a small group of content creators.
"That reality? Because you're not entitled to your own."
Ok troll. Fuck off.
I see this argument time and again and as much as I agree with it, it just doesn't sound very convincing to the mainstream argument against piracy. This is gonna be a huge-ass debate and HN, in some ways, is preparing ground for our folks. One of the things I hope we will do is be dicks and challenge the arguments laid out by folks we like and support, including Alexis, so that the next time they go on, they are better prepared.
I know personally when I prepared for debates in debate class, I'd purpose take a completely opposite position to my own and try to crush my own arguments. It helped me lots - better me crushing nuances in my arguments than my opponents.
To play devil's advocate, here's a counter:
Indeed, piracy may be a service problem. But that does not keep it from also being an enforcement problem. Even in the best case scenario where we have optimal innovation, piracy will require enforcement. We believe there isn't enough of enforcement right now. This has little to do with innovation.
China also knows that their censoring doesn't stop everyone, but it stops an awful lot of people. So saying it's not going to work and then criticizing China for censorship feels like talking out of both sides of our mouth.
The broader implications are that his has a chilling effect on any type of user generated content and free speech in general.
It turns international business entities into enforcement arms for the government. Particularly problematic is that it's an attempt to extend the reach of our laws into jurisdictions with different laws and to do so through a business. People get all fired up when someone violates one of our laws, but they don't like it when China or Muslims attempt to push their laws into our jurisdictions.
I think the argument here is that the Internet was invented, developed, and commercialized in the US and Western Europe (and not in China) precisely because our belief in freedom of communication provided the room for the explosion of communication technology (and all the jobs that enables). If it had been heavily regulated and litigated as SOPA/PIPA propose, it would have taken off somewhere else.
Attempts to regulate the flow of information always sound like a great idea to those who propose them. But (aside from it being contradictory to our fundamental values as a nation) what no one can predict is what future revolutionary innovations it will be killing off.
I disagree. Copyright, at least in the US, was created as a tool to encourage innovation. If innovation is at its maximum potential, there is no need for more enforcement.
People need to be shown, not told. Look at iTunes: it came after Napster, when everyone knew how to get MP3s for free. Or the O'Reilly Safari.
Part of the problem is that many businesses don't know how to adapt. Maybe some of them simply aren't capable of doing that for whatever reason. Thing is, I'm convinced that they have to, for their own survival, because I don't believe that piracy will be stopped any time soon, SOPA or no SOPA. So I think the best way to help them recover is to help or convince them move to new ways of doing business, but that's a pretty tall order.
* I say 'could'...whether they do or not is unknown to me.
Once everyone agrees DNS filtering is just wrong, _then_ we can talk about their problems. Otherwise we're just being held hostage.
And if that means fewer people care about copyright, well, it's their job to make people care about copyright for the right reasons. Not because they'll otherwise blow things up.
Your response is a perfect example of why we are failing the communication war. We simply want to get to the technical end: dns filtering is wrong.
Meanwhile, the opposition is saying: SOPA means more US jobs. You tell me which idea has a better chance of sticking in the average consumer's mind?
A better counter would be something like: SOPA means Americans going to jail for watching a YouTube video. Let them counter with "that's not true!". Well, it is as true as saying SOPA means more jobs.
When you're right, you want to move the argument to principles and facts. You don't want the debate muddled, b/c the more people know the likelier they are to agree with you.
(Unless you mean that Youtube really does mean jail? I haven't tracked the less bad parts of the bill so closely.)
Innovation is the answer and without innovating they are just losing millions/billions of dollars due to their foolishness!
Create an Internet license where each site who distributes and or facilitates distribution pays up!
If that is true, the act seems ineffective. How hard would it be to shut down The Pirate Bay and open up an identical site like The Buccaneer Bay, followed by the Corsair Bay etc?
Of course this may invite another round of legislation, which would contain more severe provisions...
... or it could be that Cotton is just wrong.
Copyright infringement is not "Piracy". The special interests that brainwashed the masses into using the term "Piracy" have scored a major win.
Every time you use the term "Piracy" you play by their rules.
The situation is the same with the P-A-T-R-I-O-T act. Every time you pronounce it simply as "Patriot Act" - you are playing by the rules of those who crated it.
1. Excellent introduction and overview of the debate by Chris Hayes
2. NBC General Counsel makes three interesting (cringe-worthy) points:
-jobs
-this only applies to international sites
-the internet is a lawless place
3. He is mostly shot down by Hayes who said if it really only applied to international rogue sites then people wouldn't be making such a big deal about it
4. Alexis makes the points:
-the problem of piracy will best be solved by innovation, not legislation
-the internet is not a "lawless" place and the DMCA is effective
-"piracy is a service problem" ie, if you provide better access to information you will win
5. Random other dude chimes in and says the government did a massive study and can't conclusively say that piracy is killing jobs at all... the entertainment industry is actually growing
6. NBC GC talks a little bit more, mostly being hysterical about how piracy is rampant and terrible.
Great job Alexis!!